Books/Self-Publishing

My Publisher.com

Everyone on this board has great photos that would look awesome in a book.

www.mypublisher.com is a website where you can design your own coffee table book then have it printed, assembled, and mailed to you.

How To

Go to mypublisher.com and download the software - easy to use, reminds me of PowerPoint. Begin by selecting a book style (you can change it anytime). Some of the choices are: hardcover, size, photos only, wedding, text and photos, etc.

Next add photos to the filmstrip. Below the filmstrip is a virtual book where you can drag/drop photos. Play around with the arrangement and number of photos per page. Think about a theme or ways to make the photos flow from page to page. Add blurbs about the photos. Change the background color of the page.

I don't know much about fiddling with the resolution of digital pics, but 300dpi for a scanned photo and just using the pics as pulled from my camera yielded great results. The photos actually look better in the book than they do on the computer screen so don't stress - or shrink photos of dubious resolution and create a collage.

There is a helpful red line which appears around the border of your photo if the software thinks the resolution is too low - just shrink the photo and a blue line will appear meaning you are good to go. Having this basic editing tool and a few others in the software is very helpful. Last thing I wanted to do is spend hours in photoshop tweaking digital photos.

Wrapping it up

The preview mode lets you flip through the book, then hit the purchase button. Photos will be uploaded to their webserver and you will be walked through the credit card procedure. Upload went fast and I was equally impressed with the turnaround time. I finished the order on Tuesday morning and received the books Friday morning using the cheapest shipping method. Check the website, I used a buy one get one free coupon.

My book was 27 pages, paperback, 7.75 x 6 inches, and cost $23 for 2. The paper they used is a semi-gloss and you can't see through the pages so it's ok to print double-sided. The cover is a slightly heavier stock.

Couldn't be more pleased with the result. This is the earliest I've finished my x-mas shopping in years.

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